Blog

Hackers get access to Samsung phones via mobile security flaw

Mobile security researchers have discovered a security flaw in Samsung's default keyboard on its smartphones which can be exploited by hackers to snoop around your phone. Hackers could potentially access the phone's camera, read text messages, install apps and use the microphone to listen to what you're up to.

It's down to a flaw in the Samsung IME keyboard (based on the SwiftKey keyboard), which is installed on every Galaxy smartphone. The keyboard can be tricked to accept a malicious file when the language software updates while connected to a compromised network.

The vulnerability in question may not easy to exploit, but SwiftKey advises Samsung owners to stay off unknown Wi-Fi networks for now. Samsung says it's about to patch the issue through its Samsung KNOX service with updates begining to roll out in a few days. However, , the age-old Android fragmentation issue means that many users won’t have access to the updates for quite a while.

For now the question remains whether staying away from connecting your Samsung Galaxy phones to public WiFi networks will help protect against potential hacks.